Title: New-Dialect Formation
Subtitle: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes
Publication Year: 2004
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/
Book URL: http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/cgi/odbic.exe?input=NewWeb/Books/Trudgill2608.htm
Author: Peter Trudgill, Professor and Chair of English Linguistics,
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Hardback: ISBN: 0748618767, Pages: 208, Price: U.K. � 45.00
Abstract:
This book presents a new and controversial theory about dialect
contact and the formation of new colonial dialects. It examines the
genesis of Latin American Spanish, Canadian French and North American
English, but concentrates on Australian and South African English,
with a particular emphasis on the development of the newest major
variety of the language, New Zealand English.
Peter Trudgill argues that the linguistic growth of these new
varieties of English was essentially deterministic, in the sense that
their phonologies are the predictable outcome of the mixture of
dialects taken from the British Isles to the Southern Hemisphere in
the 19th century. These varieties are similar to one another, not
because of historical connections between them, but because they were
formed out of similar mixtures according to the same principles. A key
argument is that social factors such as social status, prestige and
stigma played no role in the early years of colonial dialect
development, and that the 'work' of colonial new-dialect formation was
carried out by children over a period of two generations. The book
also uses insights derived from the study of early forms of these
colonial dialects to shed light back on the nature of 19th-century
English in the British Isles.
Features
* Written by a leading and influential scholar in the field
* The book raises controversial new issues in the study of dialect
formation
* Introduces the main processes involved in the development of
colonial varieties
Customers in North America please contact Oxford University Press (US)
Lingfield(s): Sociolinguistics
Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)
See this book announcement on our website:
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=10534.